


The Burden of Command

by tersa (alix)



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Angst, Existential Angst, Friendship, Gen, Male Friendship, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-15
Updated: 2011-12-15
Packaged: 2017-10-27 09:18:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,247
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/294156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alix/pseuds/tersa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Guilt continues to weigh Kaidan down after losing Ashley at Virmire, and a private moment with Shepard allows him the opportunity to try and understand why her and not him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Burden of Command

**Author's Note:**

> From the 2011 Ficmas prompt: " _I'd like to see Kaidan's survivor POV after Virmire. I feel like I've read a lot of Ash's survivor's guilt drabbles or fics, but none with Kaidan reflecting on it._ "

A familiar voice broke into Kaidan’s contemplation of the view out the window, bringing his head around. “Bars are always the first thing to get back up and running.” John Shepard dropped easily into the seat diagonal from Kaidan, the glass in his hand placed atop the rickety cloth covered table. “On Elysium after the Blitz, the city I was staying in got hit hard. They hadn’t even gotten electricity back up when the pubs started re-opening.”

“And yet here we are,” Kaidan commented, taking a drink from his glass. The salt and garlic from the stuffed olives couldn’t completely mask the harshness of the homebrew liquor, but they helped. He only winced a little after every sip.

“Better than the alternative,” Shepard replied. “Should we toast?”

“To what?”

“Given the circumstances?” Shepard asked, giving a glance around. Flux had survived the worst of the Battle of the Citadel, but the scars still showed. “Fallen comrades is traditional.”

“Fallen comrades,” Kaidan echoed with little enthusiasm, clinking his glass with Shepard’s before they both drank.

Lowering the glass, Shepard was looking at him speculatively, putting it to rest before asking, “Something bothering you, Alenko?”

Kaidan swirled his drink, watching the olives tumble around the amber colored fluid, debating how truthfully he wanted to answer. Deciding _what the hell_ , “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

A corner of Shepard’s mouth went up then faded into a resigned sigh. “Permission granted. What’s eating you?”

“Virmire—why me?”

Whatever it was Shepard expected, it was clear from his reaction it hadn’t been that. Blinking, he straightened on the crate serving as his chair, leaning away from the table. Seconds ticked by, a silence Kaidan waited out until Shepard said one word. “Ashley?”

 _Ashley_ not _Williams_ , Kaidan registered immediately and took a harder look at Shepard. For the first time, Kaidan noticed the strain showing around the corners of his eyes and the furrows on his forehead. With a grimace, Kaidan nodded. “Yeah. Why did you double back for me? You could have saved her.”

Shepard picked up his glass and tossed it back, polishing it off in a single gulp then signaled Doran for another. He refused to respond until another glass was delivered, but then stopped the volus with a hand to the wrist, “Bring out the bottle.” It was hard to read the volus’s expression through the environmental suit, but his breathing seemed to quicken at the contact and he trundled off hurriedly to fill the request. Taking a stiff swig of the new drink, Shepard finally said, “Maybe. Maybe not.”

“At least it would’ve been a _chance_ ,” Kaidan said, letting some of his frustration bleed through his tone. “She didn’t deserve to die there.”

“And you did?” Shepard shot back harshly.

Kaidan flinched. “No, but I was ready to. Someone had to make sure that nuke went off, and I was already wounded. Williams had done her part, I still had a job to do.”

“The nuke went off,” Shepard noted. “Seems to me you did your job just fine.”

A headache began pinging between Kaidan’s eyes, and he lifted a hand to rub at his forehead, willing it away. This wasn’t a conversation he wanted to do again, and he needed to understand. The guilt was a black rock in his chest, uncomfortable and constricting. “I _asked_ you to go after her, though, and leave me.”

“You asked, but ultimately it was still my decision as the CO.” His voice had gone flat, almost devoid of emotion.

“I was more expendable. How many Gunnery Chiefs has the Alliance got with her kind of record?”

“About as many Staff Lieutenants with yours,” Shepard replied, a hint of anger beginning to color his tone.

“It’s just me.” A bleak emptiness wash over Kaidan at the admission, but he persisted. “My parents, sure, but no wife, no siblings, no kids. She had family—sisters—she was supporting. They needed her.”

“Dammit!” Shepard exploded, slamming his fist on the table and causing his glass to jump, alcohol sloshing over the edge to stain the tablecloth. “Don’t you think I _knew_ that?”

A charged silence fell over the table, broken only by Shepard’s heavy breathing. Heads turned to look at the two humans and the raised voice, but when nothing further ensued, eventually turned back to their own drinks and their own problems. Doran scurried out warily and put a bottle on the table, hurrying off as fast as his little legs could carry him. Wordlessly, Shepard opened it and poured a measure in his glass, hesitated, then topped Kaidan’s off as well. It took another long drink before Shepard was ready to speak again. “I had two choices facing me: go back and help you fend off the geth threatening you and the nuke, or try to make my way down to where Kirrahe and Ashley were and save them.” His jaw clenched, the muscle working, before he went on. “I put her down there knowing it might very well be a suicide mission. We know _now_ I might have been able to go down there and make a difference, but right there, in that moment, I thought the chances were slim. And there was still the mission to complete. That nuke _had_ to go off. If I’d gone after her and the geth had killed you and disarmed the nuke, then we would have been screwed.” He clenched his glass in his hand until the knuckles turned white. “I went with what the mission demanded I do.”

Something about Shepard’s clinical explanation struck Kaidan as wrong. He remembered the two of them, the way Williams seemed to lose some of her stick-up-her-ass, hard-bitten marine exterior around Shepard, and the way Shepard seemed to relax, becoming well, at least _less_ formal around Williams. He couldn’t stop prodding at it. “If you knew it might be a suicide mission, why didn’t you leave me with Captain Kirrahe? Williams could have just as easily armed that nuke as I did.”

“Off the record?” Shepard said in a low-pitched voice, but each syllable laden with intensity. “Between you and me? Because she was a grunt marine, that was her _job_ , just like yours is being a techhead. If I’d left you behind and taken her and something had gone wrong with the nuke, I’d question myself for the rest of my life if I’d let my personal feelings influence a command decision and never forgiven myself.”

The silence that followed the words was awkward this time, Kaidan staring down in his glass feeling ashamed and even more guilty for pressing the topic. “I’m sorry.” The words came easily. They were cheap, everyone used them. But Kaidan meant them, and there was nothing else he _could_ say.

The sharp laugh barked from Shepard. “Yeah, so am I,” he agreed, suddenly shoving his glass away. “Anything else, Kaidan?”

Kaidan shook his head. “No. Only—thank you. For trusting me.”

Shepard waved it off. “We went through a mass effect relay in a God damn MAKO together and took down a fucking Reaper. Who else in this universe _can_ I trust?”

A breathy laugh escaped Kaidan. “True.”

“Enough of this,” Shepard said, pushing roughly to his feet. “I need to hit something. You up for some sparring practice?”

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

Rising more slowly, Kaidan nodded. “Sure. Let me take some meds first. Biotics fair game?”

Shepard smiled thinly. “Of course.”

_Oh, this is going to be fun._


End file.
